Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir
By:
Laura M. Flynn
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Lowest New Price: $6.85
List Price: $15.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Description:
When Laura Flynn was a little girl, her beautiful, dynamic mother, Sally, was the center of her imagination. It wasn’t long, however, before Sally’s fun-loving side slowly and methodically became absorbed by madness. As Laura’s parents divorced and her father struggled to gain custody, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest while Laura and her sisters united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother taught them so that they might deflect the danger threatening their fragile family.
Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is redolent with place. In luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic childhood had Laura and her sisters not been resilient and determined enough to survive their environment even as they yearned to escape it.
Publisher: Counterpoint
Customer Review: 2 out of 5
swallow the ocean - The author spends much of the book going into great detail about fairly mundane things that seemingly have no impact on the story. She jumps around quite a bit as well. Very little of the detail seemed to culmonate in anything. But an interesting topic that did give me a better picture of the disease.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Even if you don't like Memoirs .. Read this one. - My new addiction is reading memiors. I started a few months ago and have read about 10 so far and this is the only one at present that I am writing a short review for. I take the rating of books on amazon very seriously and that is why I gave this book the highest of 5 stars.
Laura's mother still remains much of a mystery to me even though were reading her story though her childs perspective .You never get to "hear" from Sally" . which frustrated me a bit but I understand why we didn't get all the blanks filled in .. I would read a few chapter then have to put this book down because I was on a vacation but I always could not wait to get back to the story at the end of the day . NO movies or tv could lure me away until I finished it . I cannot imagine how hard living with a parent like this could be how terrifying and yet you still feel the love that Laura and her siblings felt for their mother. Its easy to say . "She should have been given some help alot sooner and the kids removed from her home way before they were " however they were not and perhaps this is what made the writer we have here today . I hope for more books from Laura Flynn .
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Nice - It is always wonderful when people share such intimate details of their life.
Aaron Bryant: BSW, CSAC Author A Synchronous Memoir of Addiction and Recovery
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Good Book - This is a very good book. I think it should be turned in to a movie on Lifetime or something like that. Although the Author jumps around a lot, which I guess thats a Memoir for you. It would be better in a movie in sequence, very good book for anyone who knows someone with schizophrenia or any one really. You don't want to put the book down. You want to find out whats coming next.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A clear, detailed and heartwrenching look at life with a mentally ill parent - This is exactly the kind of memoir I most like to read. The author, Laura Flynn, tells in clear, beautiful language a muddled, sad story---her life with her mother, who was paranoid schizophrenic but refused any treatment. She and her sisters endure years of life with a mother who was increasingly out of touch with reality, who took out much of her anger on Laura's older sister Sara, and who in spite of all this could at times be an amazing, creative mother. This is a also an account of how hard it was in the 1970s for a father to get custody of children, even in a case like this where the mother was clearly unfit to parent. Thankfully, he finally did, and the dramatic way Laura's mother falls apart the day that happens casts a sad light over the memory of the years before and over all the future years. The memoir is also, in a way, one that may give hope to a lot of people---Laura and her sisters turn out well, saved by the happy early years and the love of their father and step-mother, and extended family. I really liked the writing here. The book was well-written without being showy---I never got the feeling this was a showplace for hours spent in writer's workshops, but rather, a story that needed to be told and was told, very well.
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